CSI: San Antonio

Last Saturday started as a normal day for me. I slept in, lazed around, was planning a trip to Costco to have a lunch that would consist of many sample-sized bits of smoked salmon, cheesecake, and chicken pot pie. Little did I know of the drama that awaited me…

As I walked across my room while getting ready, I glanced at one of my venetian blind-covered bedroom windows. I saw an unusual glint of light across the bottom of the window and raised the blinds to investigate. The glint of light that I had seen was the sun hitting a stress fracture that had shot down from a set of holes that ran through one of the double-paned windows next to my bed. The hole on the inside was about ¼” diameter and maybe 4′ off the ground.

Needless to say, I was a little flustered. How long had the hole been there? Had somebody shot at my house when I was sleeping 3 feet away? What kind of hoodlums are running around in McAllister Park behind my house?

So, being the loyal crime-tv watcher I am, I investigated. I checked the ground for bullet shards. I looked for pieces of glass. I moved my furniture to see if a BB had rolled underneath anything. I went across the room and rifled through the pile of crap that was in the direction that the holes came from to see if I could find the chunk of metal that had busted up my windows. I closely examined the hole in the window. If I had had a GSR kit I would have used that for something as well.

Then I called Daddy.

Dad came to the house, looked at the window, and said the words that made me know that I was not adopted.

“Do you have a straw or a skewer that we can poke through the holes to see what direction it came from?”

YES! At least I’m not the only one who thinks that I know how to do everything because of tv.

So, Dad and I investigated some more, and I called the police station so they could send an officer to get me a case number for what could possibly become an insurance claim.

The officer was friendly and asked me if I had any enemies that would want to hurt me or my property. I didn’t think so, as none of my ex’s know what a blog is, so wouldn’t be aware that I was not speaking so highly of them. I don’t know that any of the drivers I’ve cut off on the way from work would follow me home to only shoot a hole in my window… so, the answer was no. Officer Whatever-his-name-was then looked at the window, examined, squinted, investigated. Then he told me that from the shape of the hole, it looked like the shot came from the inside.

TWIST!

I told him that that was perhaps a bigger problem since I do not nor have ever owned a gun (except if you’re planning a B&E – in that case, I have 12 guns, and they’re all loaded and stashed under various pillows around the house). He asked me if I lived with anyone, I said no (except for you B&E crowd – I live with 3 large men who are all bouncers at various biker bars). He continued the questioning until he even got down to had anyone EVER lived here with me and do I ever have people over? Yes, those answers were yes. He told me that sometimes people carry around guns for fun and like to shoot stuff – sometimes they look like toys and I might not know that they were actually operational. Well, he said that more or less. By then I was bored and anxious – I was completely positive that my friends are not the pellet-gun-totin’ type and was tired of him telling me that they were. Incidentally, if COPS had been following this guy, they probably would have had a pretty highly-rated episode.

The officer finally made his way to the door. He said that if I thought it was a bullet from an actual gun (not a BB or pellet), he would make a report and a crime scene investigator would need to come out and take evidence. I was not interested in having somebody poke around in my shit to later go home and tell their significant other just how thick a layer of dog hair was on the carpet of the house they had to go to today.

Anyway, I tried to convince the officer (and myself) that the bullet came from outside. As a side note, when I am nervous I tend to speak even more quickly with faster and even more dramatic subject changes and more random topics than usual. He was humoring me, sort of, until I told him that I do, in fact, watch a lot of CSI on tv, so I know about fragmenting, glass shards, etc etc, and I wasn’t sure myself of what direction it came from bc of conflicting evidence. This did not thrill Officer SAPD, and he stared at me for a few seconds, perhaps waiting for me to be embarrassed and apologize for thinking I could do his job because of all of the tv I watch. I did not, and he left shortly thereafter.

Maybe he hasn’t been a cop for long. He didn’t even ask for a straw to stick through the holes.

(Upon further research, I found that when a bullet passes through glass, it makes a cone. The smaller side of the cone points towards the origin point, putting my shooter outside of my house. Suck on that, SAPD. Thanks, Internet!)